The Law and the Lady

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER XXXIV. GLENINCH.

  "AHA!" said Benjamin, complacently. "So the lawyer thinks, as I do,that you will be highly imprudent if you go back to Mr. Dexter? Ahard-headed, sensible man the lawyer, no doubt. You will listen to Mr.Playmore, won't you, though you wouldn't listen to me?"

  (I had of course respected Mr. Playmore's confidence in me when Benjaminand I met on my return to the hotel. Not a word relating to the lawyer'shorrible suspicion of Miserrimus Dexter had passed my lips.)

  "You must forgive me, my old friend," I said, answering Benjamin. "Iam afraid it has come to this--try as I may, I can listen to nobodywho advises me. On our way here I honestly meant to be guided by Mr.Playmore--we should never have taken this long journey if I hadnot honestly meant it. I have tried, tried hard to be a teachable,reasonable woman. But there is something in me that won't be taught. Iam afraid I shall go back to Dexter."

  Even Benjamin lost all patience with me this time.

  "What is bred in the bone," he said, quoting the old proverb, "willnever come out of the flesh. In years gone by, you were the mostobstinate child that ever made a mess in a nursery. Oh, dear me, wemight as well have stayed in London."

  "No," I replied, "now we have traveled to Edinburgh, we will seesomething (interesting to _me_ at any rate) which we should never haveseen if we had not left London. My husband's country-house is within afew miles of us here. To-morrow--we will go to Gleninch."

  "Where the poor lady was poisoned?" asked Benjamin, with a look ofdismay. "You mean that place?"

  "Yes. I want to see the room in which she died; I want to go all overthe house."

  Benjamin crossed his hands resignedly on his lap. "I try to understandthe new generation," said the old man, sadly; "but I can't manage it.The new generation beats me."

  I sat down to write to Mr. Playmore about the visit to Gleninch. Thehouse in which the tragedy had occurred that had blighted my husband'slife was, to my mind, the most interesting house on the habitable globe.The prospect of visiting Gleninch had, indeed (to tell the truth),strongly influenced my resolution to consult the Edinburgh lawyer. Isent my note to Mr. Playmore by a messenger, and received the kindestreply in return. If I would wait until the afternoon, he would get theday's business done, and would take us to Gleninch in his own carriage.

  Benjamin's obstinacy--in its own quiet way, and on certain occasionsonly--was quite a match for mine. He had privately determined, as one ofthe old generation, to have nothing to do with Gleninch. Not a word onthe subject escaped him until Mr. Playmore's carriage was at the hoteldoor. At that appropriate moment Benjamin remembered an old friend ofhis in Edinburgh. "Will you please to excuse me, Valeria? My friend'sname is Saunders; and he will take it unkindly of me if I don't dinewith him to-day."

  Apart from the associations that I connected with it, there was nothingto interest a traveler at Gleninch.

  The country around was pretty and well cultivated, and nothing more.The park was, to an English eye, wild and badly kept. The house had beenbuilt within the last seventy or eighty years. Outside, it was as bareof all ornament as a factory, and as gloomily heavy in effect as aprison. Inside, the deadly dreariness, the close, oppressive solitudeof a deserted dwelling wearied the eye and weighed on the mind, from theroof to the basement. The house had been shut up since the time of theTrial. A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the keys and the chargeof it. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful disapproval of ourintrusion when Mr. Playmore ordered him to open the doors and shutters,and let the light in on the dark, deserted place. Fires were burningin the library and the picture-gallery, to preserve the treasures whichthey contained from the damp. It was not easy, at first, to look at thecheerful blaze without fancying that the inhabitants of the house mustsurely come in and warm themselves. Ascending to the upper floor, I sawthe rooms made familiar to me by the Report of the Trial. I enteredthe little study, with the old books on the shelves, and the key stillmissing from the locked door of communication with the bedchamber.I looked into the room in which the unhappy mistress of Gleninch hadsuffered and died. The bed was left in its place; the sofa on which thenurse had snatched her intervals of repose was at its foot; the Indiancabinet, in which the crumpled paper with the grains of arsenic had beenfound, still held its little collection of curiosities. I moved on itspivot the invalid-table on which she had taken her meals and written herpoems, poor soul. The place was dreary and dreadful; the heavy airfelt as if it were still burdened with its horrid load of misery anddistrust. I was glad to get out (after a passing glance at the roomwhich Eustace had occupied in those days) into the Guests' Corridor.There was the bedroom, at the door of which Miserrimus Dexter had waitedand watched. There was the oaken floor along which he had hopped, in hishorrible way, following the footsteps of the servant disguised in hermistress's clothes. Go where I might, the ghosts of the dead and theabsent were with me, step by step. Go where I might, the lonely horrorof the house had its still and awful voice for Me: "_I_ keep the secretof the Poison! _I_ hide the mystery of the death!"

  The oppression of the place became unendurable. I longed for the puresky and the free air. My companion noticed and understood me.

  "Come," he said. "We have had enough of the house. Let us look at thegrounds."

  In the gray quiet of the evening we roamed about the lonely gardens, andthreaded our way through the rank, neglected shrubberies. Wandering hereand wandering there, we drifted into the kitchen garden--with one littlepatch still sparely cultivated by the old man and his wife, and all therest a wilderness of weeds. Beyond the far end of the garden, dividedfrom it by a low paling of wood, there stretched a patch of wasteground, sheltered on three sides by trees. In one lost corner of theground an object, common enough elsewhere, attracted my attentionhere. The object was a dust-heap. The great size of it, and the curioussituation in which it was placed, aroused a moment's languid curiosityin me. I stopped, and looked at the dust and ashes, at the brokencrockery and the old iron. Here there was a torn hat, and there somefragments of rotten old boots, and scattered around a small attendantlitter of torn paper and frowzy rags.

  "What are you looking at?" asked Mr. Playmore.

  "At nothing more remarkable than the dust-heap," I answered.

  "In tidy England, I suppose, you would have all that carted away outof sight," said the lawyer. "We don't mind in Scotland, as long as thedust-heap is far enough away not to be smelt at the house. Besides,some of it, sifted, comes in usefully as manure for the garden. Herethe place is deserted, and the rubbish in consequence has not beendisturbed. Everything at Gleninch, Mrs. Eustace (the big dust-heapincluded), is waiting for the new mistress to set it to rights. One ofthese days you may be queen here--who knows?"

  "I shall never see this place again," I said.

  "Never is a long day," returned my companion. "And time has itssurprises in store for all of us."

  We turned away, and walked back in silence to the park gate, at whichthe carriage was waiting.

  On the return to Edinburgh, Mr. Playmore directed the conversation totopics entirely unconnected with my visit to Gleninch. He saw thatmy mind stood in need of relief; and he most good-naturedly, andsuccessfully, exerted himself to amuse me. It was not until we wereclose to the city that he touched on the subject of my return to London.

  "Have you decided yet on the day when you leave Edinburgh?" he asked.

  "We leave Edinburgh," I replied, "by the train of to-morrow morning."

  "Do you still see no reason to alter the opinions which you expressedyesterday? Does your speedy departure mean that?"

  "I am afraid it does, Mr. Playmore. When I am an older woman, I may bea wiser woman. In the meantime, I can only trust to your indulgence if Istill blindly blunder on in my own way."

  He smiled pleasantly, and patted my hand--then changed on a sudden, andlooked at me gravely and attentively before he opened his lips again.

  "This is my last opportunity of speaking to you before you go," he said."May I speak f
reely?"

  "As freely as you please, Mr. Playmore. Whatever you may say to me willonly add to my grateful sense of your kindness."

  "I have very little to say, Mrs. Eustace--and that little begins witha word of caution. You told me yesterday that, when you paid your lastvisit to Miserrimus Dexter, you went to him alone. Don't do that again.Take somebody with you."

  "Do you think I am in any danger, then?"

  "Not in the ordinary sense of the word. I only think that a friend maybe useful in keeping Dexter's audacity (he is one of the most impudentmen living) within proper limits. Then, again, in case anything worthremembering and acting on _should_ fall from him in his talk, a friendmay be valuable as witness. In your place, I should have a witness withme who could take notes--but then I am a lawyer, and my business is tomake a fuss about trifles. Let me only say--go with a companion when younext visit Dexter; and be on your guard against yourself when your talkturns on Mrs. Beauly."

  "On my guard against myself? What do you mean?"

  "Practice, my dear Mrs. Eustace, has given me an eye for the littleweaknesses of human nature. You are (quite naturally) disposed tobe jealous of Mrs. Beauly; and you are, in consequence, not in fullpossession of your excellent common-sense when Dexter uses that lady asa means of blindfolding you. Am I speaking too freely?"

  "Certainly not. It is very degrading to me to be jealous of Mrs. Beauly.My vanity suffers dreadfully when I think of it. But my common-senseyields to conviction. I dare say you are right."

  "I am delighted to find that we agree on one point," he rejoined, dryly."I don't despair yet of convincing you in that far more serious matterwhich is still in dispute between us. And, what is more, if you willthrow no obstacles in the way, I look to Dexter himself to help me."

  This aroused my curiosity. How Miserrimus Dexter could help him, in thator in any other way, was a riddle beyond my reading.

  "You propose to repeat to Dexter all that Lady Clarinda told you aboutMrs. Beauly," he went on. "And you think it is likely that Dexter willbe overwhelmed, as you were overwhelmed, when he hears the story. I amgoing to venture on a prophecy. I say that Dexter will disappoint you.Far from showing any astonishment, he will boldly tell you that you havebeen duped by a deliberately false statement of facts, invented and setafloat, in her own guilty interests, by Mrs. Beauly. Now tell me--ifhe really try, in that way, to renew your unfounded suspicion of aninnocent woman, will _that_ shake your confidence in your own opinion?"

  "It will entirely destroy my confidence in my own opinion, Mr.Playmore."

  "Very good. I shall expect you to write to me, in any case; and Ibelieve we shall be of one mind before the week is out. Keep strictlysecret all that I said to you yesterday about Dexter. Don't even mentionmy name when you see him. Thinking of him as I think now, I would assoon touch the hand of the hangman as the hand of that monster! Godbless you! Good-by."

  So he said his farewell words, at the door of the hotel. Kind, genial,clever--but oh, how easily prejudiced, how shockingly obstinate inholding to his own opinion! And _what_ an opinion! I shuddered as Ithought of it.